Menu

Tag Archives: design

You might also call this CaseCampWorthTheWait, this one is bigger, huger and also larger than ever, featuring a full on mini-conference followed by a casecamp classic. The latter part is free as always, but your donations ($50 is suggested) is going towards SickKids. Eli Signer the superhuman behind CaseCamp and his team of rockstar collaborators have an ambitious target to raise $50,000 for the hospital for sick kids, specifically:

The Critical Care Unit at Toronto’s SickKids Hospital delivers round-the-clock care for children in urgent medical situations. The waiting room, located outside the unit, is a space designated for the families and friends who are visiting patients. Visitors use this room in a variety of ways: some are only dropping by en route to being admitted to the CCU while others will set up camp there for an extended period of time. The space must cater to a diverse population with multiple needs and preferences. Currently the space is in dire need of a renovation. -more

For posterity here is the slideshare version of my Augmented Reality talk, which I presented for the first time at Refresh Events in Toronto. As a first cut, this presentation represented more of a shotgun scattershot rather than a linearly coherent narrative of the various thoughts on this topic currently spinning in my head my these days.

For background this was the talk proposal. I think I got to most of this stuff.

How “Augmented Reality” and the mobile web changes everything

Mobile broadband access and ever-smarter phones are shaking the internet out its lofty cloud and bringing the web into the real world. As a result, the old “real world”, and many old ideas and many old business models will be running out of places to hide from the pervasive influence of the net.

Meanwhile, each of our smart phones are in many ways even better than the old clunky tools we used to use to surf the net. Our mobile devices are not only connected but, also bristling with sensors like radios, cameras, microphones, GPS etc. that can directly perceive and interact with the world around you. We’re reaching a point where it’s theoretically possible to point that device at almost anything: a landmark, a product on a store shelf, your friends or a crowd of people; and draw from the cloud and your social graph as much, or perhaps more, relevant information than you ever wanted to know. Oh, and the cloud will be watching you and whatever’s around you as well.

In the new augmented reality, the web surfs you.

The goal of this talk will be to provide you with a fast paced overview of what this new “augmented” reality will mean for how we socialize, for how we sell and market physical products, for architecture, for media and entertainment, for public policy, crime, privacy and, as well, few early signals for what might be the new killer apps.

If all that is not interesting enough, I will also bring free beer.

How did it go? I think it went well! thanks for all the wonderful twitter feedback. 100+ tweets and counting =)

Last week, I gave Microsoft’s new browser a shake, now it’s time to look at the competition. There is a lot else to like about Google’s new browser. But this, this is my favorite feature:

Why does (almost) every product google touches, feel so refreshingly natural to use? A significant part of their competitive advantage comes from an enormous, if invisible, effort of design restraint.

Not trying to make your product always the centre of attention, getting the hell out of the user’s way, is a product design decision that many of us could learn from. And it’s a lesson than certain OS makers, for example (here’s looking at you Redmond & Cupertino, can continue to ignore at their peril.

The design principle of neutrality doesn’t mean less features (Under the hood, Chrome is pretty feature rich for a first generation browser). Just not pestering users with popups they can’t understand, not painting window wrappers and task bars in garish and distracting colors is a good start.

Most of the products we build are tools, they are a means for the user not an end. In most ways good usability is all about reducing all sources of mechanical, perceptual and cognitive friction. If you can get a design to a point where users can instinctively ignore it, that probably means you are doing a good job.

For this an other reasons (also notable the wonderful built-in tab/task manager), Google chrome is now the main browser on our home pc.